Excuse my blatant asking but is there any consumer protection in US and CA?

Like this:

Under EU rules, a seller must repair, replace, or give you a full or partial refund if something you buy turns out to be faulty or doesn’t look or work as advertised. You always have the right to a minimum 2-year guarantee, at no cost. However, national rules in your country may give you extra protection.
You can return any purchase within 14 days without justification…

https://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/consumers/shopping/guarantees-returns/index_en.htm

This actually pretty old law served me well as 14d are usually enough to test a drive quite thoroughly (including badblocks).

Netflixer?

…but I’d rather call them idiots: Usually those people are just too dumb to backup anything themselves (with very few exceptions).

German proverb applies here:

Selber schuld.

Not unsimilar to Schadenfreude and often accompanied by shrugging and even laughter…

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PS: Sorry for your loss, though <3 At least you learned something more valuable :)

learned the importance of backup

Good. Sorry that you learned it the hard way but I guess all of us do ;)

And, yes, external drives are a scam - cheapest drives ever in cheapest cases ever, prone to everything. If you don’t believe it, then try to find out, what kind of hardware is built in and ask the manufacturer for technical data.

Still, they can be okay for other instances of your data (aka backup).